On Fasting, against the Psychics 11–17

But I believe all these things are unknown to those who are disturbed at our practices, or perhaps learned only by reading, not also by attention, in accordance with the greater force of the unskilled among the, of course, most glorious multitude of psychics. For that reason we have gone through each kind, of fasts, of xerophagies, of stations, so that, while we review according to the provision of both testaments how much the duties of food refused or cut back or delayed profit, we may beat back those who weaken them as empty; and likewise, while we show in what order of religion they have always stood, we may refute those who accuse them as new. For what has always been is not new, nor is what is useful empty. But this too is before us: that some of these duties, commanded by God to man, constituted a law; others, offered by man to God, discharged a vow. Yet a vow too, when it has been accepted by God, makes a law for the future, through the authority of the one who accepted it; for he who approved it when done commanded it to be done thereafter. So from this point too the dispute of the opposite party is covered over in another form, when they say: “Either it is false prophecy, if a spiritual voice has established these solemnities, or heresy, if human presumption has invented them.” For in censuring the form in which the old things also ran their course, and turning back upon us from it what the adversaries of the old things could have raised against them, they must either reject those also or else accept these outright; most necessarily, since these too, from whatever founder they come, whether spiritual or merely faithful, run toward the same God as the old ones. For beyond doubt, among all of us who are priests of the one God the Creator and of his Christ, both heresy and false prophecy will be judged by a difference of divinity; and so I defend this side indifferently, offering them whichever ground they wish to take their stand on. “It is the spirit of the devil,” you say, O psychic. Then how does it enjoin duties of our God, to be offered to none other than our God? Either argue that the devil acts with our God, or let Satan be counted the Paraclete. But you assert that it is a human antichrist; for heretics are called by this name in John. And how has he, whoever he is, arranged these duties toward our Lord in our Christ, since the antichrists have gone forth with duties toward a God opposed to our Christ? On which side, then, do you think the Spirit is confirmed among us: when it commands, or when it approves, the things that our God has always both commanded and approved? But again you fix boundary stakes for God: as for grace, so for discipline; as for spiritual gifts, so also for solemnities; so that his duties have ceased just as his benefits have; and so you deny that he imposes obligations still, because here too “the law and the prophets were until John.” It remains for you to take away the whole of it, as far as lies with you, since it is so idle.

For already, in this matter too, you reign, enriched and sated, not running into sins that must be filed away by fasts, nor needing a knowledge of revelations that must be wrung out by xerophagies, nor fearing wars of your own that must be scattered by stations. Suppose the Paraclete had fallen silent after John, and we ourselves had arisen as prophets to ourselves chiefly for this purpose, I do not now say to beg off God's anger or to obtain his protection or favor, but to fortify ourselves in advance for the condition of the last times, enjoining every humility of mind, since prison must be learned, and hunger and thirst must be practiced, and the endurance both of going without food and of anxious diet must be taken up, so that the Christian may enter prison as he would have come out of it, about to suffer there not punishment but discipline, not the torments of the world but his own duties, and so go forth to the contest from custody the more confident, having no excess of flesh, so that the tortures may have no material, since he is armored with bare, dry skin and horny against the claws, the juice of his blood having gone ahead as the baggage of the soul, the soul too already hastening, since by frequent fasting it has already come to know death at close range. Plainly, it is your way to set up cookshops in the prisons for doubtful martyrs, lest they miss their accustomed habits, lest they grow weary of life, lest they be offended by the new discipline of abstinence, which your Pristinus, no Christian martyr, never touched. Him, stuffed for some time by the privilege of free custody, with all the baths, as if better than baptism, and all the retreats of luxury, as if more secret than the church, and all the allurements of this life, as if more worthy than the eternal one, bound, I suppose, by this, lest he should wish to die, you finally, on the very day of the tribunal, in broad daylight, dosed beforehand with spiced unmixed wine as an antidote, so unmanned that, tickled by a few claws (for this is what drunkenness felt), he could no longer answer the governor's question which Lord he confessed; and so, racked now on this point, since he had only hiccups and belches, he died in the very act of denial. That is why those who preach the discipline of sobriety are false prophets, that is why those who observe it are heretics! Why, then, do you hesitate to believe in the Paraclete, whom you deny in Montanus, in Apicius?

You lay it down as a rule that the solemnities of this faith have been established by the Scriptures or by the tradition of the forefathers, and that nothing further in the way of observance may be added, because innovation is unlawful. Stand on that ground, if you can. For look, I confront you: you too fast beyond the Pascha, outside those days on which the bridegroom was taken away; you insert the half-fasts of stations; and you sometimes live on bread and water, as each sees fit. In short, you answer that these things are to be done by choice, not by command. So you have moved from your ground by going beyond tradition, when you undertake things that have not been established. But what sort of thing is it that you allow to your own choice what you do not grant to God's command? Will more be permitted to human will than to divine power? I remember that I am free from the world, not from God. So it is mine to do a duty for the Lord of my own accord; so it is his to enjoin it. I ought not only to obey him but also to court him; the one I render by his command, the other by my choice. It is well, though, that bishops too are accustomed to order fasts for the whole people, I do not mean for the purpose of collecting contributions, as is your way of catching, but sometimes also from some cause of concern for the church. So if you practice a common humility of mind all together, even by a man's edict, how is it that in us you censure the very unity of fasts and xerophagies and stations? Unless perhaps we offend against the decrees of the senate and the mandates of the emperors set against assemblies. The Holy Spirit, when he was preaching in whatever lands he wished and through whom he wished, from foresight of impending trials, whether of the church or plagues of the world, in which respect he is called the Paraclete, that is, the advocate who entreats the judge, used to order remedies of duties of this kind, say, now, for training in the discipline of sobriety and abstinence. We who receive him necessarily observe also what he then established. Look at the Jewish calendars and you will find nothing new in this, if all later posterity keeps with hereditary religion what was commanded to the fathers. Besides, throughout the Greek lands, in fixed places, those councils drawn from all the churches are held, through which both the deeper questions are treated in common, and the very representation of the whole Christian name is celebrated with great reverence. And how worthy this is, with faith leading the way, to gather from every side to Christ! “See how good and how pleasant it is for brothers to dwell in unity!” You do not readily know how to sing this, except when you are dining with several others. But those assemblies, having first been engaged in stations and fasts, know how to grieve with those who grieve and only then to rejoice with those who rejoice. If we too, in different provinces, represented to one another in spirit, perform those solemnities which the Word then present sponsored, it is the law of the sacrament.

In observing their times, then, and days and months and years, are we Galatianizing? Plainly, if we are observers of Jewish ceremonies, of legal solemnities; for the apostle unteaches those, restraining the continuance of the old testament, buried in Christ, and establishing that of the new. But if there is a new creation in Christ, there will have to be new solemnities too; or if the apostle erased altogether all observance of times and days and months and years, why do we celebrate the Pascha in a yearly cycle in the first month? Why for fifty days after it do we pass the time in all rejoicing? Why do we dedicate the fourth and sixth days of the week to stations and the Preparation Day to fasts? And yet you sometimes even continue a fast over the Sabbath, which must never be fasted except at the Pascha, for the reason given elsewhere. For us, certainly, every day is also celebrated with a general consecration. So the apostle's distinction is not a matter of difference of days, since he distinguishes new and old. But here too your inconsistency will be laughed at, since you reproach us with the form of antiquities in the very thing in which you accuse us on the ground of novelty.

He also condemns those who command abstaining from foods, but from the foresight of the Holy Spirit, condemning in advance the heretics who would enjoin perpetual abstinence in order to destroy and despise the works of the Creator, such as I shall find in Marcion, in Tatian, in Jupiter, the heretic of today, descended from Pythagoras, not in the Paraclete. For how slight is our prohibition of foods? Two weeks of xerophagies a year, and not whole ones, the Sabbaths and Lord's days of course excepted, we offer to God, abstaining from things we do not reject but defer. And indeed, writing to the Romans, he now stings you, the detractors of this duty: “Do not,” he says, “for the sake of food destroy the work of God.” What work? The one of which he says: “It is good not to eat meat and not to drink wine. For he who serves in these things is acceptable and pleasing to our God.” “One believes that all things may be eaten, but another, who is weak, eats vegetables; let him who eats not despise him who does not eat. Who are you to judge another's servant?” And “both he who eats and he who does not eat give thanks to God.” But since he forbids a dispute to be made over a human choice, how much more over a divine one? So he knew how to accuse certain chasteners and prohibiters of diet, those who abstained from disdain, not from duty, and to approve those who did so in honor of the Creator, not in insult to him. And if he handed you the keys of the meat market, allowing all things for eating, in order to establish the exception of things sacrificed to idols, yet he did not shut up the kingdom of God in the meat market. “For the kingdom of God,” he says, “is not eating or drinking”; and “food does not commend us to God”: not so that you should think this said of dry food, but rather of rich and elaborate food, since, adding, “neither, if we eat, shall we abound, nor, if we do not eat, shall we lack,” he thunders rather at you, who think that you abound if you eat and lack if you do not eat, and therefore disparage these things. How unworthily, too, you interpret the Lord to suit your appetite, as eating and drinking indiscriminately! But I think he also fasted, he who pronounced blessed not the sated but the hungry and thirsty; who professed a food not the one his disciples had supposed, but the completing of his Father's work; who taught us to work for the food that endures to eternal life; who in the ordinary prayer also commanded us to ask for bread, not also for the riches of Attalus. So too Isaiah did not deny that God chose fasting, but listed the kind he did not choose. “For in the days of your fasts,” he says, “your own wills are found, and you shake all those subject to you, or you fast for quarrels and strife and strike with fists. Not such a fast have I chosen”; but the kind that he added below; and by adding it he did not remove fasting, but confirmed it.

For even if he prefers works of righteousness, yet not without sacrifice, which is a soul afflicted by fasts. He is certainly the God whom neither a people incontinent in gluttony pleased, nor a priest, nor a prophet. There still remain the monuments of craving, where the people most greedy for flesh were buried, gorging on quails to the point of cholera. Old Eli is dashed down before the doors of the temple, his sons fall in battle, his daughter-in-law dies in childbirth. For this blow the shameless house, the cheater of the fleshly sacrifices, had earned from God. Shemaiah, the man of God, when he had prophesied the end of the idolatry introduced by King Jeroboam, after the king's hand had withered and at once been restored, after the altar had split apart, was invited by the king on account of these signs to be compensated; he plainly excused himself (for he had been forbidden by God) from touching food there at all; but soon, having rashly eaten with another old man who falsely claimed to be a prophet, according to the word of God spoken right there over the table he was not buried with his fathers. For struck down by a lion meeting him on the way, and buried among strangers, he paid the penalty of a fast abandoned. These will be examples for the people and for the bishops, even spiritual ones, if they commit any incontinence of gluttony. But the warning has not ceased even in the underworld, where in the rich man, the feaster, banquets are tormented, but in the poor man fasts are refreshed, having Moses and the prophets as teachers. For Joel too cried out: “Sanctify a fast and proclaim a service,” foreseeing even then that other apostles and prophets would sanctify fasting and proclaim duties that serve God. Hence those too who court their gods by adorning idols and decorating them for this purpose and greeting them at each hour are said to “perform service.” And the heathen too recognize all humility of mind. When the sky is spellbound and the year is dry, barefoot processions are proclaimed, the magistrates lay aside their purple, turn their fasces backward, utter the prayer by formula, renew the sacrifice. In some colonies, besides, with a yearly rite, clothed in sackcloth and sprinkled with ashes, they offer a suppliant hunger to their idols; baths and shops are closed until the ninth hour. There is one fire in public, at the altars, and not even water in the dishes. A Ninevite suspension of business, I think; a Jewish fast, certainly, is celebrated everywhere, when, leaving the temples, along every shore, anywhere in the open, they at length send up prayer to heaven. And though they disgrace the duty of mourning by their dress and adornment, still they affect a show of abstinence and long for the authority of the lingering star. But it is well that, while heaping blasphemies on our xerophagies, you liken them to the chastity-rite of Isis and Cybele. I admit the comparison as a witness. From this it will be established that ours is divine, since the devil, the rival of divine things, imitates it. From truth a lie is built, from religion superstition is patched together. Hence you are the more irreligious as the heathen is more ready. He, in short, sacrifices his gluttony to an idol; you will not do so to God. For to you the belly is God, and the lungs a temple, and the paunch an altar, and the cook a priest, and the Holy Spirit the smell of cooking, and seasonings spiritual gifts, and belching prophecy.

You are the old one, if we want to tell the truth, you who indulge only your gullet, and rightly you boast of being first; I always recognize that you smack of Esau, the hunter of wild beasts; so eagerly do you study to track down thrushes everywhere, so do you come in from the field of your very lax discipline, so do you faint in spirit. If I offer you a little lentil stew reddened with boiled-down must, you will at once sell all your birthrights; with you love (agape) boils in the cooking pots, faith grows warm in the kitchens, hope lies on the dishes. But agape is of greater importance, because through it your young men sleep with their sisters. Lewdness and luxury, of course, are appendages of gluttony. Knowing this partnership, the apostle too, after first saying “not in drunkenness and revelry,” added “nor in beds and lusts.” It belongs to the indictment of your gullet that with you a double honor is assigned in double portions to those who preside, whereas the apostle gave double honor as to brothers and to leaders. Who is holier among you, except the more frequent at banquets, the more lavish in catering, the better equipped with cups? Rightly do you, men of soul and flesh alone, reject spiritual things. If the prophets pleased such as you, they were not mine. Why, then, do you not preach consistently, “Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die”? just as we do not hesitate to command openly, “Let us fast, brothers and sisters, lest perhaps tomorrow we die.” Let us openly vindicate our disciplines. We are certain that “those who are in the flesh cannot please God”: not, surely, in the substance of the flesh, but in its care, its affection, its working, its will. Thinness does not displease us; for God does not give flesh by weight, as he does not give the Spirit by measure. More easily, perhaps, will a slimmer flesh enter through the narrow gate of salvation; more quickly will a lighter flesh be raised; longer will a drier flesh last in the grave. Let boxers and Olympic fighters be fattened. Ambition for the body suits those who also need strength, and yet they too grow strong on xerophagies. But ours are other strengths and other powers, as also other contests, for whom “the wrestling is not against flesh and blood, but against the powers of the world, against the spiritual forces of wickedness.” Against these one must stand not with flesh and blood, but with faith and a robust spirit. Otherwise, a fatter Christian will perhaps be more needed by bears and lions than by God, except that even against beasts he ought to be training for thinness.